


It's Real

by kabigon



Series: (I Can't Wait to Go) Home [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Future Fic, Infidelity, LobbySameSameChallenge, M/M, Romanticized Cheating, Slow Burn, cheating with each other, post-retirement, vague smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29770059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kabigon/pseuds/kabigon
Summary: “I don’t like goodbye with Javi,” he says.  “I like hello more.”
Relationships: Javier Fernández/Yuzuru Hanyu
Series: (I Can't Wait to Go) Home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187993
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	It's Real

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks to [of_feathers_and_bowstrings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_feathers_and_bowstrings) for beta-ing =)

“No goodbye?” he grins into the phone when the line clicks over, Yuzu accepting his call as he pushes the curtains open to let the sun in. In the background he can hear the bustle of a busy airport and a lady speaking over the PA system calling for first class to begin boarding. This close, this clear, there’s no way it’s not Yuzu’s flight. He’s already missed his own a few hours ago. It’d been a fool’s wish booking a flight so early for him. Seven in the morning? Surely his new assistant knew better than to expect him to make that flight, no?

There’s a pause where Javi holds his breath waiting for an answer while Yuzu mulls over what to say. Finally, “I don’t like goodbye with Javi,” he says. “I like hello more.”

Basking, sunshine streaming in to warm his face, Javi’s grin widens as he speaks. “Yeah? So how about another hello? Join my show this year.”

He can practically hear Yuzu’s answering grin. “Just one?”

“Or all of them.”

“Guest only?”

Javi sucks in a breath. “And choreograph. For me. I must say I am a very demanding director. You might have to spend many hours with me.”

“If Javi says that then I must say I am a very demanding choreographer. I will make you repeat over and over again until perfect. I will definitely make you spend many hours with me.”

“Deal.”

Another pause, then, “I think about it.”

A laugh escapes through his lips, sudden and without thought, Yuzu seemingly drawing it out effortlessly. “I’ll have my people contact your people.” In the background he can hear the flight attendant doing a final call for first class boarding. “Go, Yuzu,” he urges. “It’s not goodbye. It is just… until then.”

“No goodbyes,” Yuzu echoes, repeating the sentiment. “Just, ‘Until then.’”

* * *

Yuzu decides to come a month early, wants to live and explore and eat and _breathe_ Madrid. “Have to do proper research,” he had told Javi very adamantly. “It is important. I have to do Spanish culture justice.” Every day since, he’d been counting down, his body thrumming with excitement, with anticipation.

Clara rests a hand on his thigh during breakfast with a calm, teasing smile on her lips. “What is with you?” she asks, curious. “I have never seen you like this before.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he tells her, his knees stilling under her touch. He kisses her cheek and then sips from his cup of coffee, buying himself some time to think over his explanation. In the end, he lets the truth come tumbling out. There really is no need to lie. There’s nothing to hide, not really. Not yet. Maybe never, save that one night after Evgenia’s and Wakaba’s wedding. That’s different though. Cherished. Private. Special. Everyone knows Yuzu is special, especially to him.

“Ah,” she lets out in understanding, her eyes lighting up. “The great and mysterious Yuzuru Hanyu is finally here today. Will I get to meet him?”

“Sure,” he offers half-heartedly. “We’ll plan dinner or lunch or something. I think we can escape work for a couple of hours.”

She pats his thigh, pleased by his answer, before retreating. “That would be nice.”

It’s quiet after their exchange, a mostly silent breakfast, par for their norm most days while he goes through his emails and she grades papers. Absently, she plays with her engagement ring, thumbing at it from the other side, the ring rocking to and fro on her finger.

Before the engagement, his mother had asked him, “Javi, when will you finally settle down?”

In her kitchen, eating her food, he had chuckled. “In due time, mom.”

“Have you given it any thought?”

He had shrugged. “Some. Looks like everyone is getting married or finding their life partners and I just don’t know.”

She slipped her fingers into Javi’s hand, curling to give him a squeeze. “What are you unsure about?”

“I don’t know,” he had told her truthfully.

It’d been about time. A little over three years with Clara—longer than he’d been with Miki even, the only person prior he had thought about marrying someday—so he should. He just… he had kept waiting for the day he felt like he wanted to propose and, he supposes, after proposing because he felt obligated more than truly wanting to, now he’s waiting for the day he feels like he wants to marry her.

He can still remember the relief he had felt when she accepted, staring down at the ring newly slipped onto her finger with a promise Javi hadn’t wanted to make quite yet, and told him, “You pick the wedding day. I have been ready, Javi, so whenever you are ready.”

When Yuzu’s message arrives, a quick, succinct, “Here,” Javi is practically bouncing again. He’s up and out of his seat the next second, dropping his nearly empty mug into the sink for later. He kisses the top of Clara’s head goodbye and drives half an hour to the airport so he can be the first person to welcome Yuzu back to Spain. He probably would have been the first anyway, but why wait to do something later?

He plays it cool, leaning against the trunk of his car, arms loosely crossed over his waist, unable to contain the grin that spreads slowly across his face, like sunlight on the sidewalk when the sun is just beginning to rise, when he spots Yuzu entering the pick-up areas for arrivals. Any second thoughts he may have entertained before, fleeting as they may have been, any musings about staying strictly two friends working together so they’d have nothing to hide, dissipate.

Sparks fly even before they speak. He can’t stop even if he wanted to, pulling Yuzu into him, slotting their mouths together in an open-mouthed kiss, Yuzu dropping everything to finally touch him, a hand on his shoulder, the other cradling the back of Javi’s head. It’s dumb, stupid, but at least they’re in Spain. They’d never get away with this in Japan. Probably wouldn’t get away with it in Canada either. Definitely not if Brian or Tracy are nearby. Doing this with Yuzu, kissing him, starting an affair—he can’t lie now, that’s what this is—isn’t something to be proud of but there’s nothing and no one in Hell or Heaven or on Earth that could ever make him feel ashamed of Yuzu. Nothing. No one. Never. Very likely, that makes him a terrible person.

They’re barely through the door of Yuzu’s suite before Javi crowds him against the wall. He holds back at the last second though, hovering over Yuzu, their breaths intermingling, inseparable, before Yuzu snaps, surging the short distance to seal their mouths together.

“Javi,” he rasps out as they pull apart to peel their shirts off, both slowly inching towards the bed, Yuzu approaching it backwards. Impatiently, Javi snags Yuzu into another kiss and lifts him off the ground, carrying him to the bed where, surprisingly, he lays Yuzu down gently.

“I missed you,” Javi murmurs, kissing a line up Yuzu’s chest, over the bones of his sternum, into the dip between his collarbones where there’s an adorable mole, up the curve of his neck and closing his mouth over Yuzu’s pulse point, and "I want you," feeling each heartbeat thumping against his tongue, Yuzu baring his neck for easier access.

Bracketing Javi’s head between his palms, peering into Javi’s eyes, with an intensity he’s never seen in anyone’s eyes but Yuzu’s, Yuzu says, “You have me. You can have me.”

* * *

Javi jerks awake in the evening, a slight chill on his naked body, sometime within the golden hour “when the light of the sun is softer and there is a reddish hue that lights everything up like gold.” Gui had explained to him once after Javi had asked why he stopped in the middle of a busy street to take out his phone (his professional tool of choice) and snap a picture.

His mouth is dry and his throat is raspy, sleep in his eyes, and he must look a damn hilarious sight blinking up at Yuzu who, on the other side of the bed, has already put himself back together, his hair damp from a shower.

On his stomach, his arms under his pillow, Javi flops back down, yawns and groans out, “How are you even awake?”

Above him, Yuzu cards his hand through Javi’s waves—hair this short, they're no longer curls—pushing his hair back from his face. “Javi promised me Spain.” 

He hums in reply, an easy smile forming when Yuzu shifts, hand sliding back to cup a cheek, Javi leaning into the touch. “I did,” he concedes. “What would you like to do first?”

“You shower first,” Yuzu says. “Then we get food. I am—how do you say?—famished?” Javi nods and Yuzu continues. “I am famished so must have food first.”

“Food it is. Shower with me?”

“I already shower,” Yuzu says, and then sighs when Javi kisses the palm of his hand and asks again. “Okay. But shower only. I know how Javi’s mind works.”

“Do you?”

“Of course. After fifteen years, of course I know.”

He does, Javi admits, especially when a peck leads to two leads to another, leading to kisses, hot and hard and then Yuzu on his knees staring up at Javi with lust-blown eyes, holding the base of Javi’s dick, jerking him off while blowing him too. God, how is he going to give this up? How can he?

* * *

Night in Madrid is never dark. Everything's aglow in the plaza with warm yellow street lamps to set the atmosphere, and buzzing, too, with the clinks of silver against plates, the scrape of wooden legs against cobblestone, the soft thumping of footsteps and the low hum of a few dozen different conversations happening all at once, of the live instrumentals playing from somewhere else within the square.

They’re on their way back to Yuzu’s hotel after they’ve eaten, Yuzu having let him order because “I trust you,” and him, all the more nervous for it, spilling out to Yuzu, “I trust you to tell me if I get it wrong,” when Yuzu suddenly stops. Javi doesn’t notice he’s alone for a few steps until he turns to connect with Yuzu mid-sentence only to find himself alone. He pivots, spinning on his heels before he spots Yuzu a few feet behind.

The plaza isn’t so busy that Yuzu is obstructing anyone’s path. Not that Javi would have noticed anyway, not with how the edges around Yuzu blur the rest of the world away. Yuzu stands there with his eyes closed, his mouth parted, head tipped back, and he’s just… listening, feeling. Javi freezes, mesmerized by Yuzu’s process in progress. They talked about this over dinner, how Yuzu creates from memories, from his emotions, how he throws everything he has into every program because he doesn’t know any other way, and how there’s so much beauty in every second if only people stopped long enough to see. He has lived this, lived Madrid, fully immersed himself back in for nearly a decade now so that he doesn’t notice the beauty in this moment anymore. But not Yuzu. For Yuzu who understands how precious life is more than most people, every breath post the earthquake and tsunami is a moment to appreciate, to sink into, to cherish.

Gingerly, he approaches Yuzu, waits for Yuzu to finish, and when he opens his eyes Javi brushes his knuckles along Yuzu’s cheek. “Hi,” he says, low and intimate.

“It’s so much,” Yuzu says.

Javi’s brows pinch together, concern blooming. “Too much?”

Yuzu shakes his head. “Spain is like Javi. Never too much.”

“Smooth,” he says, mouth splitting into a grin, and then kisses Yuzu.

* * *

He hates to say it but he has to. “I have to go.”

“I know,” Yuzu says.

“It’s getting late.”

“I know that too.”

Yuzu is looking at him with pleading kitten-like eyes and Javi can’t- One more. He allows one more. Again, again until, one last time he finally works up the willpower to pull away. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Yuzu nods. “Tomorrow. More Spain.”

“More Spain,” he confirms wholeheartedly, continues, “Goodnight, Yuzu,” and then he sighs like the thought of separation pains him, shakes some sense into his head, opens the door and resolutely walks through it. The door is almost closed behind him and all he has to do is let it. All he has to do is walk away, walk towards the stairs or the elevators, go down, out the lobby doors, go to his car, hop in, start it, and drive home. It’s easy, he tells himself, one foot in front of the other. That’s what his head keeps telling him, his heart though…

He spins, catching the door before the lock clicks into place and bursts through, stomping across the distance between them and informs Yuzu between kisses, between gasps of air, “You drive me crazy,” and Yuzu nodding, nodding and kissing and kissing him back, clutching at him, his fingers curling tight into Javi’s shirt, wrinkling it beyond quick repair.

“Stay,” Yuzu requests. “Just until I fall asleep.”

Javi kisses him again, can’t say no.

* * *

It’s late, Yuzu having slipped into sleep some time ago. Javi should have already been home an hour ago. Instead, he’s lying on his side watching Yuzu sleep, watching the emotions play across Yuzu’s face while he dreams, a pinched brow at first, stressed, and then slowly morphing into something calmer, peaceful.

Lightly he traces down the curves of Yuzu’s body. Brow bone to cheek bone, thumb brushing over the two moles on Yuzu’s face to his chin, feeling the scar still there and leaning in, kissing it when the memory flashes through his mind to reassure himself that it’s okay, Yuzu is okay now, and this is proof that Yuzu has more willpower than anyone he knows.

The truth comes unbidden, bubbling up from his chest. “I love you.” 

He’s never told Yuzu that. Not once. Not ever. Never during their short time together before Cortney and Miki and Marina. They’d been so young and he had said it before, but he hadn’t meant it how he would have meant it with Yuzu. For Yuzu, it was all-consuming, all-encompassing, like it was eating him from the inside out.

Now he’s older and Yuzu isn’t awake to hear him but at least he’s brave enough to say it out loud. “I love you,” he whispers into Yuzu’s ear. “I love you, Yuzu.”

* * *

He has Yuzu bent over, forearms braced against the glass of the room’s nearly floor to ceiling windows while he holds Yuzu securely by the hips, railing him from behind. He’s not sure how he talked Yuzu into this—or was it the other way around? The spark of danger makes heat roil in his stomach, lust on slow simmer. They’re only a few floors up, visible from the ground so anyone— _anyone at all_ —can look up and they’ll see Yuzu splayed for him, offering himself, on display.

“When you say you show me Spain,” he gasps between moans, “I think you didn’t mean like this.”

“New experiences, right?” Javi asks, his words hot against Yuzu’s ear.

“Yes,” he agrees, Javi flushed against his back, pushing him into the glass, fucking him so good he’s gagging for more, so greedy and needy and desperate he’d agree with anything.

After, clothed again, Yuzu hides his face in Javi’s shoulder in shame. “Javi, why did I let you do that?”

A laugh rumbles in his chest. “It was hot.”

Yuzu whines, embarrassed, cheeks burning hot. “Anyone could have seen.”

He kisses the top of Yuzu’s head affectionately. “Don’t worry, no one ever looks up.”

“Never again,” Yuzu insist, his eyes burning with intent, at least for the moment.

“Okay,” he says easily, knowing it’s a lie. Yuzu will want to again. Maybe not later that day, maybe not even tomorrow or the following week but Javi knows he will. He came so hard he practically fainted in Javi’s arms, his legs giving out on him, thighs quivering and shaking, knees buckling.

* * *

They do make it out for lunch. Dinner too. In between he takes Yuzu to his favorite place in Madrid—Temple of Debod—and they walk around for hours holding hands like they’re a couple before settling down underneath a tree, shaded but still peeks of sunshine coming through, Yuzu basking in the sun. It’s not so warm anymore but it’s still not yet too cold that a few blankets won’t help. They lounge there for quite some time enjoying each other’s presence and, once in a while, he’ll lean down to kiss Yuzu or Yuzu will rise up to chase after him. After, he takes Yuzu to his favorite sports bar, Real Madrid winning after a neck and neck game, and he’s so buzzed and so happy, so light and so free that he presses Yuzu against the bar and kisses him silly in celebration. Yuzu huffs a laugh and kisses him back.

* * *

Clara doesn’t say anything but Javi can feel her eyes on him instead of the papers strewn about their dining table. “What is it?” he asks when he caves.

Her eyes are trying to discern, looking closely over his face. “I don’t know,” she says. “There is something different about you but I don’t know what.”

He shrugs. “I got a haircut yesterday.”

She grins and pulls back, resettling properly in her seat as she picks up her coffee and sips from the cup. “You don’t think that’s something I wouldn’t notice, do you?”

He laughs. It’s a genuine moment between them. “You have always been more observant than me,” he concedes.

Good-naturedly, jokingly, she threatens him. “Don’t you forget that.”

She’s looking at him later as if she’s unable to stop herself, her curiosity unquelled.

* * *

“Oh, so you suddenly remember you run an academy now, Javi?” Sara asks when he skids to a halt next to her on the ice.

He chuckles at the jab, swatting at her lightly. "It was only a few days." Even with her indignant, "A few days?! It was a whole week unscheduled!" he barrels on. "I'm sure as my assistant director you do an even better job than me. Besides," he says, "I have a surprise for everyone."

Unimpressed, she stares him down. “A surprise. Well, this surprise better be- Yuzu?!”

On cue, Yuzu waves from the edge sheepishly, wearing a nervous grin when he finally steps on the ice, coming to a stop by Javi’s other side. No one else skating stops, exactly, but there is a definite shift, students slowing down and watching out from the corner of their eyes if not out-right gawking.

“Hi, Sara,” he says, making himself tiny. Cheater, Javi thinks fondly, watching Sara fall for Yuzu’s schtick as she practically pushes Javi aside and throws herself on Yuzu, drawing him in for a hug.

“It’s been so long! What are you doing here? Finally come to choreograph for us? Make us your home rink?”

Yuzu laughs, his nose crinkling, bright and merry. “No. I come to do show with Javi.”

“Revolution?” Yuzu nods. She ribs at him. “Took you long enough. Thought Javi was going to have to beg on his knees.” Javi chokes on his own spit, hacking coughs clawing their way up his throat while Yuzu hardly reacts, hard trained from years of media. Sara turns to him, concerned. “You doing okay there, Javi?”

“Yes,” he says between fits. “Just, swallowed wrong.” And then, “Why don’t we introduce Yuzu to everyone? Yuzu will be working with them, doing the choreography for their part.”

Intrigued, Sara cocks her head. “Oh?”

“I do something Spanish. I come early to do research but two full weeks Javi never take me anywhere I can see flamenco. Since a long time ago at Fantasy, I want to do flamenco so I think I come early to learn from the bests but with Javi it’s just temple and bars and…” Yuzu rattles on with his discontentment while Sara’s eyes flick to Javi’s momentarily, suspicious, confused. Whatever she thought she keeps to herself though, flicking back to Yuzu in the next breath. “Sara, you take me to better places?”

The curve of her smile is genuine and she hooks her arm around Yuzu’s, tugging him away from Javi as they set off. “I’ll take you to the best places, Yuzu. Javi knows nothing.”

“Hey,” he says after them. “You two ganging up on me now?”

* * *

All his friends have told him, at one point or another in the months and years he’s known them, that he wears his emotions on his sleeve. “You make a terrible liar, Fernandez,” Raya had said and Javi had laughed, elbowing him in the ribs, and they’d continued on. It shouldn’t be a surprise that two of his closest friends figured him out so quickly.

Sara had made good on her promise, a _tablaos flamenco._ Meal _and_ a show at the same time and Yuzu had been delighted, his whole face lighting up, cheering and clapping and whoo-ing after every performer alongside Sara, telling her, from bits Javi could gather over the lively music, “Everyone is so good!” and “thank you for bringing me!”

Javi hangs back with Sonia, watching Yuzu as much as he’s watching the performers, if not more, and he knows it’s written all over his face. He tries to hide his feelings behind a fork or a glass of wine or water or chewing on food or yelps of his own but that only does so much to disguise the love-struck grin.

In a lull, Yuzu and Sara distracted with each other, talking, Sonia says calmly to him, “Javi, I hope you know what you are doing.”

He’s a bad liar so he doesn’t lie or fib or pretend. He shrugs and tells her, “I don’t,” and when she sighs, he says, “I don’t want to give him up.”

She reaches out and curls her fingers around his hand, making a tangible connection, reminding him she’s coming from a place of love, of friendship. “I cannot say I support you doing this. We have grown up together and you are one of my dearest friends. I know that you are a better man than this. Yuzu or Clara. You have to choose. They deserve all of you and for you to be true to them.”

He swallows down the knot in his throat, guilt rising in an attempt to suffocate him, held off only because Javi clears his throat to speak. “I know. I know what I want and what I should do. I just have to do it.”

She nods slowly, sympathetically, giving his hand another quick squeeze before she draws back.

* * *

At the metro station, they separate, Sonia and Sara each going their own way after hugs and kisses, and Yuzu is smart enough to work out why they don’t ask him if he needs help going back to his hotel, if he needs directions. On the subway, staring at their threaded fingers, Yuzu says softly, “They know.”

Javi lifts their hands up and presses a hard kiss to the back of Yuzu’s hand. “Yes.”

“They must think I am a horrible person. That I am ruining Javi’s relationship with fiancé.”

“They don’t think that,” he says and feels Yuzu’s hand tighten around his.

“They must,” he says, pushing. “I think I am horrible so they must.”

“No,” he insists, peppering Yuzu’s hand with more kisses. “You are not responsible for anything or anyone or any relationship. If anything, it’s _me._ I should stop. I should but just- I ca- I don’t _want_ to.”

Quietly, so low Javi has to strain to hear him, Yuzu says, “I am a homewrecker.”

Javi sighs deeply, all protests sucked out of him. Truth is, yeah, Yuzu is. So is he, more so. Truth is-

He bumps his forehead against the side of Yuzu’s head, rests there, eyes shut, murmuring when he has the courage, “I don’t care if you don’t care.”

A quick inhale, Yuzu’s nose flaring, then he twists to face Javi, eyes roving over his face, looking for an answer. He must find whatever he’s looking for because the next breath is, “I don’t care.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please click right on to the next part ^_^.
> 
> Favorite line to write in this part: He just… he had kept waiting for the day he felt like he wanted to propose and, he supposes, after proposing because he felt obligated more than truly wanting to, now he’s waiting for the day he feels like he wants to marry her. Kind of because "Damn, Javi."
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and, as always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated.


End file.
